she'd even spouted the automatic courtesy.

Tears flowed over her face unchecked, commingling with the drizzling rain.

She stood frozen to the spot and watched the empty street. Her last image of Charles was of the EMT starting CPR as the ambulance sped away.

'Blessed Jesus, protect him. Mother of God, shelter him in your loving arms.

Please God ... please...'

"Momma?"

Brigitte's high-pitched cry roused Jeanette from her state of shock. She

turned. Her daughter stood on the front step of the building and stared out into the street where the ambulance had been parked.

"Baby, did the paramedics wake you up?"

She ran to her daughter and gathered her close.

"Yes. Who's sick?" Jeanette heard a hitch in her daughter's breathing, felt her stiffen as if to prepare herself for the worse. "Not Uncle Scott?"

"No, baby. It's Charles."

Brigitte's body relaxed. "What's wrong with him? Did he get a tummy ache or something?"

"I don't know, sugar. But we need to go to the hospital and see." Jeanette

reluctantly let her daughter go. "Scoot on upstairs and put on some clothes."

"It's a school night, Momma. What are we gonna do about that? It's late -- I checked."

Jeanette followed her daughter up the stairs. "I'll call Sister and leave a

message. We'll use one of your free days tomorrow."

"Yeah!" Brigitte skipped up the stairs. "Can we go to the movie or something -- uh, that is if Charles is okay, of course?"

"We'll see."

Jeanette avoided making any sort of definitive statement. The picture of the

paramedic working on Charles's still body replayed itself over and over in her brain.

"Just hurry. We need to be there for Charles. We're all he has, baby."

"That's so sad, Momma."

Jeanette knew that it was more than sad. It was tragic.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.

'Charity Hospital Emergency Room, Wednesday, 1:15 a.m.'

Scott saw Jeannie and Brigitte before they spied him.

He hurried to cut them off. He didn't want them to get the news from the

Emergency Room receptionist. He wished he could protect them from all things bad, but since he couldn't, he could at least soften the blows life threw them.

"Jeannie!" he called.

She stopped, then whirled around. Her face, pale with worry, brightened when she found him in the crowd. She bent over and whispered to Brigitte, who

looked where her mother pointed. Brigitte's serious little face lit up like a sparkler on the fourth of July.

"Uncle Scott!" She waved, then broke from her mother's grip to run to him,

her arms out-stretched.

Scott bent and caught the little girl up in his arms and gave her a bear hug,

rubbing his cheek on her dusky curls. This was what life was all about. It was worth protecting with every bit of his being -- be it from bad news or evil.

"Scott?"

Jeannie's voice vibrated with worry.

"I'm sorry..."

He knew he need go no further in his explanation. Her eyes reflected her

acceptance -- her prescience -- of Charles's death.

"Oh, Scott." The tears she must have held back since Charles fell ill streamed down her cheeks unheeded. "How? Why? He was so young."

"I don't know -- yet."

Scott still held Brigitte with one arm. He extended the other to her. She came

to him and took the comfort he offered.

"I'm sure there'll be an autopsy. We'll know more after that."

"It looked like a stroke." Her voice faltered. "I didn't do anything. I should've

done something -- CPR -- anything."

Scott led his girls away from the hustle and bustle of the late night ER-zoo. Lifting his arm from Brigitte's shoulder only long enough to push the door open to the doctor's on-call lounge, he waved them inside.

After he'd settled them on the ratty old couch, he shoved a pile of two-year-old Soap Opera Digests to the floor and sat on the coffee table in front of them.

"You couldn't have saved him. The paramedics said he was too far gone when they arrived. Plummeting blood pressure, thready, rapid respirations. He died in the ambulance. Even with all the modern equipment and an excellent response time, Charles was gonna be dead."

"It doesn't make sense." Jeannie looked down at Brigitte; the little girl had fallen asleep as soon as she'd gotten comfortable, snuggled against her mother's side.

Lowering her voice, she continued, "What do you think happened? He was never sick. In fact, he bragged that his grandfathers on both sides were in their late eighties and still played golf. His father was a marathoner. Why did he just die -- all of a sudden?"

"Don't know, darlin', but we'll know more tomorrow." He looked up as the lounge door opened. It was the ER doctor in charge. "You need me?"

"No. It's organized chaos tonight." He smiled at Jeannie. "Believe it or not, ma'am, we have that room well under control. Looks like all the trauma cases have gone somewhere else tonight. Mostly, we're seeing earaches and bad stomachs. Your friend was the only excitement tonight, and I'm sorry there was nothing we could do for him."

"Thank you. Scott explained."

"I hate to bother you, but Scott said you called 911, and we need to finish up some paperwork on that. Would you mind?" The doctor held out a clipboard with some papers attached.

"I'll do what I can." Jeannie reached for the paperwork.

"If it's all right, Bob, I'll help her."

"Sure, Scott. You were due a break anyway. We'll scream if we need you." Bob nodded to Jeannie and left the room.

She looked up from the documents. "I'm not sure whom to list as his next of kin. He wasn't on speaking terms with his father. His mother lives in California with her third husband. He has a brother, Andrew, in Atlanta. Do you think I should list him? I remember Charles said we'd go visit..." Jeannie sniffed back a sob. "...go visit him some day and take in a Braves game. So they must be on speaking terms, right?"

"'Cher', why don't you put down his law firm as a contact person for advising next of kin. I'm sure he had paperwork in his personnel file. They'll have the emergency information."

"That's a good idea." Jeannie bestowed a watery smile on him. "I should've thought of it."

"Why should you?" He stroked her cheek with his finger, letting it trail lightly down to the hair of the small child lying against her mother's shoulder. "You've had a shock. That's why I stayed to help. Let me get you something with sugar and caffeine. You looked wiped out."

"A Pepsi would be great. I'll just fill in the details with comments on what happened and in what order." Jeannie balanced the clipboard on the couch arm, so she could write with her right hand and still hold Brigitte with her left.

Scott fed the soft drink machine in the lounge. "Make sure you list any allergies he might have had and what he ate tonight."

"He ate the same stuff we did. I don't know anything about any specific allergies, other than the usual stuff that floats around in our air to which every self-respecting citizen of New Orleans is allergic."

"Maybe it'll be in his personnel file. Or they can ask his brother." Scott carried a couple of cans of pop and two bags of chips to the coffee table. "We'll run a check through the Medical Information Bureau and see if he had any hospital admits in the last year or so. Then we can pull any files done on him, get his history from them."

Jeannie cast a suspicious eye on the junk food. "Is this how you take care of yourself at work? Eating junk food?" She glared at the machines humming away on the far side of the room. "Don't they have any fresh, healthy food?"

"Nope. Just junk food. Chips, please note they are baked, not deep-fat-fried, are the healthiest things in the machine. I usually have the little devil's food cake thingies with the cream in the middle, but they're out tonight."

A delicate snort and a scrunching of her cute little nose indicated what she thought of his late-night eating habits.

"Well, I guess I'll have to start packing you a healthy snack for break. Your brain can't work right on junk food. Plus, your immune system needs healthy food to fight off all the germs floating around the hospital. You should know that."

"Ahh, knowing and doing are two separate things, darlin'." Scott munched a chip and offered her one.

"Well, now that I know, I'll be doing something about it." She took the chip and sniffed at it, then ate it. "Tastes like cardboard. The cake does sound better. I'll make some low-fat cookies for the guys."

"They'll appreciate it. I'll have to beat them off you with a stick."